There is no doubt that the resistance of the conscious and unconscious ego operates under the sway of the pleasure principle: it seeks to avoid the unpleasure which would be produced by the liberation of the repressed.

We are never so defensless against suffering as when we love.

It could be ventured to understand obsessive compulsive neurosis as the pathological counterpart of religious development, to define neurosis as an individual religiosity; to define religion as a universal obsessive compulsive neurosis.

I became aware of my destiny: to belong to the critical minority as opposed to the unquestioning majority.

Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessites.

When one does not have what one wants, one must want what one has.

America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.